Yes, you only live once, but…

“Well, those who are now young, will go to Church when they get old, but now, most likely, they want to use and exploit the youth they have, as a song says, ‘Take everything out of life, today you are a flower, tomorrow a dying rose”. Only, they forget that the only secret is that we do not know to whom and when it will be the end?” said Father Gavrilo, an abbot from the Lepavina monastery in Serbia.

I came upon this quote on Facebook and it got me thinking. My grandparents told me how they did not go to church when they were younger, but started going in their older years. And if you look around your church on Sundays, you will see that it is mostly filled with older people. Why is this so? Well, from the experience of being a 19-year-old girl, it is because you are told that in your youth, you should have fun. You should go out and stay up late on Saturdays and then sleep till noon on Sundays. Your youth is your youth, after all, and you are only young once.

I never really cared for these things. If anything, I am always arguing with my parents, because I do not act like other kids my age. And that is because I was in a car accident, and after it, I was just sitting and thinking, if there had been a two-second difference, I could have lost my life. It was not God’s will for me to go on that day, but we never honestly know when that day will come or whose turn it will be. So then, what is the point of wasting life on stupid things? Yes, we do only live once, but that is exactly why our life should be filled with God.

If we only have this one life, then we have the perfect chance to reach salvation and to be one with God. Why should we waste that one precious life on going to parties, staying up late, and doing stupid things when we have it to give it to God who blessed us with it in the first place? We, especially us in our youth, should strive to be in church every Sunday, to go to confession, to partake of the Holy Communion, and to be loving and non-judgmental towards everyone around us. Maybe our parents and grandparents had no one to teach them to go to church, but we do, and we should strive to be better, because we never know when the Lord will take us to Him. So, yes, we do only live once, but that once should be enough for us to come closer to God.

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